Verstappen: Testing was a huge positive ahead of Melbourne

Max Verstappen believes that Red Bull's partnership with Honda got off to a great start in winter testing, calling both weeks a "positive surprise".

The Dutchman was a very vocal critic of the Renault power units last season, his radio outburst in Hungary a very public damnation of the French manufacturer's efforts but this season he will be dealing with Honda who appears to have found some performance.

Aside from the final day after Pierre Gasly's crash the day prior limited their running, Red Bull was able to log decent mileage which Verstappen says was a great first step in their new partnership with Honda.

“I think for me what was the most important is to just feel the new engine,” he said.

“It’s a completely different power unit so I just wanted to get used to drive-ability, I wanted to understand down-shifting, all these kind of things.

“And I was very positively surprised, it was all feeling very good. We didn’t really have to change a lot around it to make it really driveable and nice. So that was a big positive.

“I was also surprised with the reliability because we did a lot of laps and we basically never really got stopped by any issues. That’s of course what you want in testing. So very impressive first few weeks.

“I think also working together with the Honda engineers was really nice and pleasant because they knew exactly what I was talking about. We really understood each other, the communication felt very easy going."